Top Bar
Musique Machine Logo Home ButtonReviews ButtonArticles ButtonBand Specials ButtonAbout Us Button
SearchGo Down
Search for  
With search mode in section(s)
And sort the results by
show articles written by  
 Review archive:  # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Cyclobe - Sulphur-Tarot-Garden [Phantomcode - 2014]

Sulphur, Tarot and Garden of Luxor are experimental Super-8 shorts made by the British avant garde film director Derek Jarman in the early seventies. Working within limited financial means, these phantasmagorical sequences of astral imaginings lacked a soundtrack, so would be projected in the director's studio accompanied by the sounds from various tapes in Jarman's collection. Four decades later, Cyclobe, the UK's most magical musicians, decided to add their own sonic interpretations to underscore these rarely seen ritualistic scenes: dark figures scrying into mirrors (Sulphur), a magus performing a reading (Tarot) and a confusion of people, pyramids and sphinxes (Garden of Luxor). And, arguably, there's no one better qualified for the job - indeed, Cyclobe's Stephen Thrower befriended Jarman in the early eighties and contributed to Coil's soundtrack of the director's mesmeric love story, The Angelic Conversation, in the mid-eighties.

The music presented here was first broadcast (and sold as a limited CDr) just before Cyclobe's sensational UK live debut, as part of Antony's Meltdown Festival in 2012, where the films were screened with their new soundtracks intact.

Sulphur, at fifteen minutes the longest piece here, has the power to send showers of chills through its listeners in a similar way to The Remote Viewer, one of Coil's most affecting works. This is, in part, due to it sharing Cliff Stapleton and Ossian Brown's masterful hurdy gurdy playing and Michael J York's arcane woodwinds. Their exquisite confluence of rough textured, reedy mid tones cut straight to the psyche in a deliciously hypnotic cycle. It starts with simple, slow tremelodic tones woozily circling around John Contreras' darting gypsy cello, and is gradually joined by all manner of subtle and deftly crafted electro-acoustic layers to form a beguiling oneiromantic vortex, both eerie and seductive.

Tarot opens with elusive vocals, similar to that on 'How Acla Disappeared From Earth' from Cyclobe's last album (2010's Wounded Galaxies...), before forming a startling theme. Thick strokes of hurdy gurdy and strings soar purposefully, angrily even, under and over arch analog electronic manifestations, gaining strength with each attempt. The questing, almost frightening, intensities perfectly portray a master of the dark arts wrestling with the future.

Garden starts in a subdued mode with a cool analog bass tone carrying what sounds like radio signals from space along with much slower, more majestic, glassy synth tones to form a disorienting introspective parade of melancholy. This somewhat sinister edge gilded with a profound sense of wonder can be found across all Cyclobe releases and makes their unique music perfectly suited for cinema, where even mainstream movies adopt avant garde musical manoeuvres to imbue their product with sensual depths.

But, without Jarman's spellbound idiosyncratic imagery the potencies of Cyclobe's intricate sound-worlds are perhaps even stronger, lacking the otherwise welcome distraction of Jarman's beautifully convoluted dream visions. Sulphur-Tarot-Garden is not a difficult engagement requiring deep listening to mine the magic from the minimalism though; on the contrary, it is a wholly accessible and affecting piece of modern classical composition that captivates and charms from start to finish.

Rating: 5 out of 5Rating: 5 out of 5Rating: 5 out of 5Rating: 5 out of 5Rating: 5 out of 5

Russell Cuzner
Latest Reviews

Cyclobe - Sulphur-Tarot-Garden
Sulphur, Tarot and Garden of Luxor are experimental Super-8 shorts made by the British avant garde film director Derek Jarman in the early seventies. Working...
190324   Pierre Jodlowski - Séries fo...
180324   José María Sánchez-Verdú - K...
180324   Celer - Cursory Asperses
180324   Burial Ground/ Nights of Terr...
150324   Uncodified - Erased People
150324   The Residents - Secret Show (...
130324   Dagr - Dagr (ltd-theatrical/ ...
130324   Ignaz Schick & Oliver Steidle...
120324   Math - Utterblight
120324   OdNu + Ümlaut - Abandoned Spaces
Latest Articles

Sutcliffe No More - Normal Everyd...
Sutcliffe No More are a British two-piece bringing together Kevin Tomkins & Paul Taylor. Formed in 2021, it’s the spin-off project/ next sonic step...
290224   Sutcliffe No More - Normal Ev...
100124   Occlusion - The Operation Is...
181223   Best Of 2023 - Music, Sound &...
051223   Powerhouse Films - Of Magic, ...
181023   IO - Of Sound, Of Art, Of Exp...
210923   Lucky Cerruti - Of Not so Fri...
290823   The Residents - The Trouble W...
110723   Yotzeret Sheydim Interview - ...
250523   TenHornedBeast - Into The Dee...
050523   Bill Morroni - The Trials & ...
Go Up
(c) Musique Machine 2001 -2023. Twenty two years of true independence!! Mail Us at questions=at=musiquemachine=dot=comBottom